"Three days later, Robert Novak wrote a column in which he named Joseph Wilson's wife, "CIA operative" Valerie Plame. Novak sourced this information to "two senior administration officials." The CIA concluded that the reference had compromised Plame's undercover status and asked the Justice Department to investigate."
Apparently the CIA made the call that she was undercover in the fact that they called ofr a special prosecutor. Now was this request made by people out to get Rove? Or was this call made in order to bring out the whole backstory of Wilson's lies and Plame's shenanigans in setting up her husband to embarrass the administration (and start and impeachment process?).
If the latter, it might have been of the nature of, "Okay, let's say for the sake of argument that she was exposed as an undercover agent... If that's what she wants, that's what she'll get. Fitzpatrick has all of this information, and more besides. Somehow, I doubt that it's Rove or Libby who're going to be busted.
Pinz
a] By this time, SOMEONE should be able to cite the date Plame-Wilson was assigned to Langley.
Better yet, the date she returned from last overseas assignment & her title in that assignment would be a great clue as well.
b] It seems also that someone would be able to note when she and Wilson-the-ambassador began to date, not when they were married but when they became an item.
I very much doubt that her covert activities or status would have continued once she became closely associated with our official representative.
(Trust me on this, "they" know who you are cozy with and people can get pulled from overseas in a flash for a potentially embarrassing liaison.)
c] I'd also like to see some kind of an evaluation of Plame-wilson's contacts and relationships within CIA; just how many of the analysts involved in this thing knew her well enough to be complicit.
If the complaint and request for an investigation was initiated by Plame's supervisor (or at a relatively low, it could have passed through the various layers of the organization with relative ease. Supervisors/managers at each level might have been reluctant to question the request for fear that they would be accused of a cover-up so it flowed on to DoJ.
I still thing the fact that Wilson was not required to sign a confidentiality agreement is important. Who in their right mind would send someone on a sensitive (classified) mission without some formal and/or legal agreement? In my opinion, Wilson had no authority to release any information that he gained during the mission therefore his op ed compromised classified information.